Topic: Semitic gods

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The Appendix of Semitic Roots (Appendix II) that follows this essay is designed to allow the reader to trace English words derived from Semitic languages back to their fundamental components in Proto-Semitic, the parent language of all ancient and modern Semitic languages.

Central Semitic is further subdivided into the South Arabian inscriptional languages; classical, medieval, and modern forms of Arabic; and the Northwest Semitic languages, which include Hebrew and Aramaic.

A distinctive characteristic of the Semitic languages is the formation of words by the combination of a root of consonants in a fixed order, usually three, and a pattern of vowels and, sometimes, affixes before and after the root.

Semitic mythology arose among several cultures that flourished in the ancient Near East, a region that extended from Mesopotamia* in modern Iraq to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

Another basic Semitic myth that came from Sumer is the story of a flood that covered the earth after humans angered the gods.

The chief of the Ugaritic pantheon was El, the father of the gods, who was generally portrayed as a wise old man. Baal, an active and powerful deity, was associated with fertility and sometimes identified with the storm godAdad.

Semiticgods refers to the gods or deities of peoples generally classified as speaking a Semitic language.

As Semitic itself is a rough, categorical term, the definitive bounds of the term "Semiticgods" are likewise only approximate.

Scholars have speculated that the "transition" from polytheism to monotheism was likely a form of theological supremacy — by which the theology of a supreme deity, the "One God," naturally grew from the supremacy of a particular culture to which that "One God" was favorable toward.

Occasionally Adad/Ishkur is identified with the godAmurru, the god of the Amorites.

On the one hand he is the god who, through bringing on the rain in due season, causes the land to become fertile, and, on the other hand, the storms that he sends out bring havoc and destruction.

He is pictured on monuments and cylinder seals (sometimes with a horned helmet) with the lightning and the thunderbolt (sometimes in the form of a spear), and in the hymns the sombre aspects of the god on the whole predominate.

Gods have never been any good at signing agreements so the contracts were signed on his behalf by the priests.

With these changes the name of the dominant god changed but, just as the Romans were adept at identifying gods everywhere with their own, the gods of these states were identified and the overall religious culture was fairly stable.

As a spring god he was identified with Tammuz and so became a solar god of fertility and creation, in contrast with Shamash who remained the solar god of justice.

Yaw or Yam is the name for the Levantinegod of chaos and the power of the untamed sea as found in texts from the ancient city of Ugarit.

In Ugaritic texts, Ba'al is also known as the king of heaven, and the first born son of El, whom ancient Greeks identified with their god Cronus.

Since Yaw/Yam wishes to raise himself to the lofty heights of the gods whom he hates, and since he is the lord of chaos and destruction, the nearest equivalent in modern thought to Yaw/Yam is the Devil.

www.biologydaily.com /biology/Yaw (305 words)

AsherahAsherim(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04)

Thus, the Asiatics or Semites might have conceived Anat to be a type of savior goddess rather like Osiris, who was killed and resurrected back to life through the efforts of his lover and wife, Isis, who found his body in a hewn pillar in the palace of the Phoenician king of Byblos.

The Egyptian god Seth is frequently portrayed in Ramesside Egyptian art forms as wearing a helmet/crown and dress resembling that of the Semitic warrior god Reshep, the god of fire, burnings and plague.

Most probably, the pillar gods of Egypt, Osiris and Hathor, are behind the pillars worshipped by the Canaanites and later by Israel when she began marrying Canaanite women (Judges 3:5-7), these mothers teaching their Israelite "sons" the worship of their Baals and Asheroth.

www.bibleorigins.net /AsherahAsherim.html (3672 words)

Of Gods, Priests and Sacrifices(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04)

He was called "the father of the gods," "the creator of creators." For all this, he seems to have been a rather passive deity who continued to exist as a shadowy father figure for the other gods and goddesses in the later pantheons of the many Phoenician cities.

One of the figurines is nude, and that fact eliminates it as a god or goddess; in the long tradition of Semitic religions gods and goddesses were always represented fully clothed in rich garments appropriate to their station.

He was the patron god of the old noble families in Carthage, particularly of the Barcids, from whom a succession of brilliant generals descended: Hamilc;ar Barca, two Hasdrubals, a Hannibal and a Mago.

The Canaanites called her "She who gives birth to the Gods" and as the "Lady who traverses the Sea" she is Goddess of both the Sea and Moon.

Around 1674 BC, the Semitic invaders, whom the Egyptians referred to as the "Hyksos", conquered Lower Egypt (northern Egypt), evidently leaving Canaan an ethnically diverse land.Among the migrant tribes who settled in the region were the Amorites.

www.crystalinks.com /canaan.html (3357 words)

Anunnaki history and the role of Reptilian ETs - Part 1(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04)

The gods were not a matter of belief: the people lived side by side with them in cities built by human laborers under the direction of Anunnaki architects and engineers.

The first appearance of the Judeo-Christian God on the stage was when he came to Earth in 1433 BC to establish for himself a nation that would worship (original word meaning “work for”) him, or perhaps 600 years earlier when he instituted the barbaric practice of male genital mutilation.

God is the greatest criminal this planet has ever seen, a great cosmic force bent on destruction and decay that poses a grave danger to humanity.

The Semites are broadly divided into the Eastern, represented by the Assyrians and Babylonians and the Western divided between the Southern in Arabia and Ethiopia and the Northern in Palestine and Syria.

He was the god of decrees and the father of the reigning king.

Another pertinent deity, because of his relationship to Sin, or Nannar, the God of Abraham is Yarikh the moon god.

The Semitic empires of Mesopotamia that followed the civilization of Sumer carried on this same basic story, substituting, of course, the names of their own Semiticgods for the original Sumerian players.

In the Semitic religions of the Ancient Near East the visible sky was simply the first of seven consecutive heavens, or realms between the earth and the thron of El.

God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.'.

Elohim, on the other hand, is a generic term for "God" or "gods" that only subsequently became a proper name.

The point is that there is one God as far as the stargate people are concerned and that's why they are trying to get rid of the Goa'uld...or false gods.

To reject the Goauld as counterfeit Gods is in some ways to affirm the existence of the real God that the Goauld try to mimic with their pretenses of immortality, omniscience and omnipotence.

www.sg1archive.com /forums/index.php?showtopic=7118 (1410 words)

Middle East Open Encyclopedia: Decapolis(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-04)

The Greek inhabitants were shocked by the Semitic practice of circumcision, while the native Semitic peoples were disgusted by the Greeks' acceptance of homosexuality and other unfamiliar sexual practices.

There is evidence that the colonists adopted the worship of other Semiticgods, including Phoenecian deities and the chief Nabatean god, Dushara (worshipped under his Hellenized name, Dusares).

The worship of these Semiticgods is attested to in coins and inscriptions from the cities.

The concept of the assembly of the gods or the divine council that occupied the station below the creator deities goes all the way back to the pantheon of Sumer, the world's most ancient civilization and was universally shared by the Semitic civilizations of the Ancient Near East that followed.

The central character is the Egyptian god Bes, the bull-eared figure on his left is Jahweh and the seated female figure to the right is Jahweh's asherah, or "consort".

Gods and their names embody truths of the deeper Spirit and meditation on them in turn invokes those truths.

Gods are bound to appear when the spiritual consciousness awakens; though in another sense they also fall away, God as well as Gods, with all their outward, anthropomorphic forms, and along with all our conceptions of them, however sublime and.

An external authority, even when it is called God in certain scriptures, threatening and promising alternately, is increasingly making less and less impression; people now realize that Godhead is their own true, secret status and they seek it in the depths of their own being.

The doctrine of the "Incommunicable Name" was established among the early Semites, and among the Egyptians, related to a secret name of a god which when discovered, gave the speaker complete control over him when uttered.

Drugs were originally ascribed the power vouchsafed by the gods for the welfare of mankind, and were supposed to greatly aid in exorcism.

Ea and Marduk, in Assyrian sorcery, were the most powerful gods, the latter being appealed to as the intermediary between human beings and their father, Ea; indeed the legend of Marduk going to his father for advice was frequently repeated in incantations.

Enlil seeks to reduce their numbers by sending first a plague and then a twice-repeated drought, but each time his plans are thwarted by the wise Enki, who reveals Enlil's intentions to Atrahasis, pious king of Shurupak, and instructs him in counteractive measures.

The gods find that, without human beings, their sustenance is cutoff and the need for them to labour returns: they lament what has happened.

Atrahasis is rewarded with eternal life and a position among the gods.

In the OT the plural Elohim is applied to Chemosh, the god of the Ammonites (Jud 11:24); Ashtoreth, the goddess of Sidon (I Kgs 11:5); and Baal-Zebub of Ekron (II Kgs 2:1).

Thus, Jesus is not God in the way that the judges of Psalm 82 are gods, but he is God in the same exact sense and to the same degree that the Father is God, i.e.

On the contrary, this erroneously assumes that the idea of God appearing as a man, or becoming human, or that God having a divine Son are teachings which are contrary to the spirit of the Hebrew Bible.